June 12: Obasanjo did the Yoruba a favour

It has inevitably become political. The posthumous national award of GCFR given to Chief M.K.O. Abiola, and the official acknowledgement that he won the June 12, 1993 presidential election have become political. Party stalwarts claim credit for their party. In the process, they also sent words in the direction of a former president of Yoruba origin whom they thought while he was in power ought to have done what President Muhammadu Buhari did. A good example of such people is Mr Festus Keyamo, a lawyer. While speaking on an NTA interview programme, One On One, in an excerpt shown on NTA at 9:54pm on June 12, 2018, Keyamo complained that Obasanjo, a Yoruba man, did not do anything regarding the affirmation of the June 12 election, rather it took “another person from another part of the country” to do something about it.

He is not alone. In an interview in The PUNCH, June 10, 2018, Chief Frank Kokori, a former labour leader, was asked questions about the same issue. The chief said he and fellow activists had thought it would happen immediately they were released from prison or detention (1998). He added that when Chief Olusegun Obasanjo became President, he unilaterally declared May 29 as Democracy Day. Since then, the battle had been on and they believed Obasanjo should have done something about it. But they didn’t know that “Obasanjo had this pathological hatred for people who he felt would be his rivals. He did not want anybody to shine like him.”

From the comment and the accolades that many Yoruba leaders have poured on Buhari (well-deserved), and the words that they send to Obasanjo, it’s clear they share Keyamo and Kokori’s view.

I don’t. In fact, I’m elated that a Yoruba man didn’t take the step while he was in power. I shall follow a roundabout route to state my reasons. I had sat in the common room of Shodeinde Hall, University of Lagos, Akoka, where I watched General Ibrahim Babangida announce the annulment of June 12 election. I had walked out with a big bottomless pit in my belly that night. I was stunned beyond word that anyone could do that to a nation. For hours I had walked around on the campus, lonely, thoughtful. I couldn’t stand with anyone to discuss what Babangida and his military boys did. I had no word to utter. I was that empty within. The emptiness continued until May 1999 when the khaki boys went away. When the civilian president, Obasanjo, came to office, I had thought he might do what Buhari did. I wasn’t surprised he didn’t. I wasn’t disappointed. I was sure one day a government would do it. But something had since happened that made me feel gratified that Obasanjo didn’t touch June 12.

There was that time after his election in 2011 that former President Goodluck Jonathan announced presidential pardon for the former governor of Bayelsa State, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. Many criticized the administration for that step at the time. The foremost criticism being, one, that Jonathan pardoned a man that had a case to answer in the UK over money laundering. Two, it was said that the former president granted pardon to someone who was accused of diverting massive amount of public fund to his private uses. I had written on the issue on this page at the time. I wasn’t concerned about those two issues. I had two different issues of my own regarding what Jonathan did. Incidentally, in my piece, I mentioned only one because of space. That one is my argument about the manner Jonathan went about granting the pardon. I had stated that a king reserved the right to pardon whoever he wished. But there is a need to be circumspect, exercise wisdom while doing so. I had considered the Jonathan approach rather brazen, somewhat inelegant. In fact, if I had been anywhere near him at the time, I would have counselled a more subtle approach, instead of such display of naked political power in the matter.

The other point that I didn’t make in my piece at the time was how governing a nation had been turned into a tribal thing. An Ijaw man was in power, so he could pardon his fellow Ijaw man. I consider that step to be rather dangerous. I thought Jonathan could have left that issue to be part of a bargaining chip for political support that the Ijaw nation could use in a negotiation with another president that wasn’t from the South-south. How the entire pardon episode was executed, in my opinion, was a threat to our nationhood. Does it mean every tribe that comes to power should make granting of presidential pardon to its convicted members a priority? That was the message from the Alamieyeseigha saga.

It was after this incident that it strongly occurred to me that it was best for another president, not Obasanjo, to do something about June 12. Somehow, if Obasanjo had done it, I wonder the kind of reception it would have had among other ethnic nationalities across the nation. I’m sure it wouldn’t be as sure-footed as what Buhari has done. It would have raised the same concerns that trailed Alamieyeseigha’s case. I don’t think June 12 deserves that kind of controversy. For what transpired on that date was not about the Yoruba, it was about a national figure that happened to be Yoruba and whom every ethnic nationality accepted. To have the matter visited by a Yoruba presidency would have done more damage than good both to the man and to what June 12 symbolises for the masses of the nation. In fact, if Obasanjo had been the one who did this, more extensive sniggers would have been added to the one that was already on the ground regarding the matter. I explain.

I moved around in the north for much of the 1990s. I interacted with a lot with young educated and politically informed northerners. I noticed that much of the activities of the activists in Lagos had left the impression on northerners that Yoruba people had made June 12 struggle their own alone. In fact, the struggle to actualize the mandate was seen by many northerners to be merely an effort to have a Yoruba president. The argument up north was that the Yoruba ignored the support that northerners gave Abiola and went about the actualization thing as though other parts of the nation didn’t matter. Friends swore to me that they the northerners would never support the actualization of the June 12 mandate because of what the Yoruba were doing. Now, this view was partly the outcome of inciting comments regularly made in some quarters which blamed all northerners for what only a few military officers in Abuja did by annulling the election. I was informed that not all northerners supported it, but they were being called all manner of unprintable names because of it. It’s important to note that till date northerners who are aware of June 12 still cherish the memory of Abiola. They had voted for him. What they did not like was how the struggle that followed was made to appear like Yoruba struggle. So they left it to the Yoruba.

No doubt a few mistakes were made in the manner the pursuit of the mandate was executed. For the picture that emerged was that other parts of the country became somewhat reticent, while people in Lagos continued with the struggle as though they could achieve success alone. Had Obasanjo visited June 12 in those early days of our return to democracy when frayed nerves were still fresh, would it have been as inclusive and uncontroversial as it was when Buhari did it? Time has healed, and every Nigerian is willing to overlook offence and see June 12 the way it should be seen. I think that by not touching the matter for whatever reason, Obasanjo did both the Yoruba and the overall significance that June 12 election has for our democracy a favour. This is the perspective from which the Yoruba should look at this matter and thereby let Obasanjo enjoy his well-deserved rest.